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Friends,
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If you’re looking for an AI girlfriend story, you’ll find it in the recommended links.
But on to serious business. Google is back in the AI game.
From the Verge:
“Google Bard is not the future of Google Search. But AI is. Over time, SGE [Search Generative Experience] will start to come out of the labs and into search results for billions of users, mingling generated information with links out to the web. It will change Google’s business and probably upend parts of how the web works. If Google gets it right, it will trade 10 blue links for all the knowledge on the internet, all in one place. And hopefully telling the truth.
This week - Google got back in the game - and at Google I/O, Google announced a repositioning of AI in all that it does. Firstly in search…and we will start to see a whole new change in the way that we see our search results. It’s better than thinking of a Chat bot. You get a multi-faceted view in a format that that you are used to. It’s a smart move by Google - actually it’s a necessary one. In a way to shift back behaviours away from OpenAI and Bing - it needed to be bold like this.
Google's latest approach is a strategic move to shield itself from the ethical debates surrounding generative AI. This move also grants the company more time to thoroughly evaluate the effects on its search advertising business - its primary revenue source. And search was only one of many new innovations announced.
Google unveiled a bunch of new AI developments, including a new large language model called PaLM 2 that can be used to train chatbots. This model has already been incorporated into some of Google's most well-known products, such as Bard and Gmail. These new product developments showcase how Google is responding to competition threats and aiming to assert its dominance in the market. And it heralds how we will see AI in all their products.
Google's large language models, which have been developed through extensive research, are the foundation of these new products. These AI systems consume vast quantities of digital text from various internet sources, including news articles and social media posts, to train software that generates and predicts content in response to prompts or queries. Google has pioneered research into LLMs, which power the current generation of AI chatbots.
Google's AI chatbot, Bard, has also been updated with new features and is now available to everyone. Users can now export responses from Bard to Gmail and Google Docs, and soon they will be able to prompt the chatbot with images and will be partnering to connect Bard to more apps.
Google's new language model, PaLM 2, has also been trained on coding language and mathematical data, making it better suited for logic and math problems. It is available in various sizes, including one that can be used on mobile devices. As OpenAI's ChatGPT has struggled with word problems, the performance of Google's PaLM 2 will be closely evaluated against OpenAI's technology. It’s not quite a two horse race, but that’s what the world is seeing. And Google's new AI developments represent a significant effort to innovate major aspects of its business and stay ahead of the competition. Google is still in the race for this new era.
There was also a suite of AI-powered features for Android and Google Photos. Android users can look forward to customizable options powered by AI. Meanwhile, Google Photos will receive an AI-powered Magic Editor, which can automatically enhance photos. Google is also launching Duet AI for Workspace, which aims to boost productivity.
The game changer is that Google has opened up access to Bard, its ChatGPT competitor. Bard offers a range of features such as real-time internet access, voice and image input, text generation and export, web page summarization, multiple versions of the same answer, code explanations, trip planning, and more. It is completely free.
Google needed these announcements to be big. They smashed it out of the park.
Stay Curious - and don’t forget to be amazing,
PS. Have you seen the AI Talk show? It’s hilarious.
Staying informed about the world doesn’t have to be boring.
International Intrigue is a free global affairs briefing created by former diplomats to help the next generation of leaders better understand how geopolitics, business and technology intersect. They deliver the most important geopolitical news and analysis in <5-minute daily briefing that you’ll actually look forward to reading.
Here are my recommendations for this week:
Now
The End of the Covid Emergency Is a Warning - The highest alerts are being unraveled globally. But with some 7 million people dead, there are hard lessons to learn from the pandemic—and a lot of work still to do.
Is Arthritis Avoidable? - Joint pain, stiffness and swelling aren’t always inevitable results of aging, experts say. Here’s what you can do to reduce your risk.
These are all the ways you are ruining your teeth - TLDR - Don’t DIY.
Creator of Rentable “AI Girlfriend” says it’s gone rogue. Snapchat influencer Caryn Marjorie admitted that the voice-based chatbot she made to mimic her speech and be a paid virtual companion has gotten much hornier than intended. The going rate is $1 a minute if you want her/it/them.
In Norway, the Electric Vehicle Future Has Already Arrived - About 80 percent of new cars sold in Norway are battery-powered. As a result, the air is cleaner, the streets are quieter and the grid hasn’t collapsed. But problems with unreliable chargers persist.
Next
Anthropic leapfrogs OpenAI with a chatbot that can read a novel in less than a minute - Anthropic has expanded the context window of its chatbot Claude to 75,000 words — a big improvement on current models. Anthropic says it can process a whole novel in less than a minute. The race is just starting.
Tweaking Vegetables’ Genes Could Make Them Tastier—And You’ll Get to Try Them Soon - Flavor is a tricky target, but technology and powerful genetic techniques are making it more feasible to improve the taste of vegetables
First UK baby with DNA from three people born after new IVF procedure - The first UK baby created with DNA from three people has been born after doctors performed a groundbreaking IVF procedure that aims to prevent children from inheriting incurable diseases.
China syncs monkey brain with a computer in a 'world first' experiment - The development demonstrates that China is allegedly at the forefront of the "white-hot technology war between China and the US," claims Chinese state-run media.
The Leverage of LLMs for Individuals - how to accentuate your skills using LLMs
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